Benefits of CI/CD

CI/CD produces both obvious and not-so-obvious benefits. The obvious benefits include getting new functionality into the hands of users faster and more often. The not-so-obvious benefits of CI/CD might be more significant.

Teams learn faster because they go through the develop-test-release-deploy cycle more often, which provides more frequent learning opportunities.

Defects are detected closer to when they are introduced, so they cost less to fix, as discussed in the “More Effective Agile Quality” chapter.

Teams experience lower stress because push-button releases become easy, without any fear of human error causing the release to fail.

As deployment becomes more reliable and routine, releases can be performed during normal business hours. If mistakes are found, the whole team can be involved, not just (tired) on-call individuals.

An emphasis on releasing multiple times per day can be beneficial even if you’re working on mission-critical software that is released to the public infrequently. Releasing frequently, even if only internally, makes quality a constant consideration. It accelerates team learning because each time a release cannot be completed, the team has an opportunity to understand why it didn’t release and improve in that area.

Finally, as described earlier in this chapter, CI/CD can increase motivation by allowing teams to spend more time on work that provides higher opportunities for growth.